Two pathways in the development of a scientific concept can be differentiated: the limited-operationalization approach, which capitalizes upon the availability of an instrument; and the popular consensus approach, which comes from a sudden interest and popularity of the phenomenon in the real world. The phenomenon of mentoring is a contemporary example of this second approach. The danger is that each group of researchers will generate its own definition of the concept, with little or no consensus between groups. To avoid this danger, three suggestions are made: (1) a theory of the monitoring process should be developed, emphasizing the various sources of variance in determining the effectiveness of the mentoring relationship, and recognizing that the process goes through a set of stages; (2) studies of the mentoring process should use multiple converging empirical operations; and, (3) only after clarifying the process, traditional methodological procedures could be used for further data gathering. (Author/BW)